We live in virus-imposed balloons, each with a radius of six feet. Drifting apart from each other, we remain connected in our search to alleviate the uncertainty and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have been alone before, adrift in a sea of questions. In 1984, at the age of seventeen, I fell twenty-five feet in a hiking accident and woke from a coma to a world I could not understand. I experienced over thirty years of depression, a common side effect of the traumatic brain injury I had experienced. My mental illness led me to jump in front of a Metro train in May of 2015. Doctors saved my life, but had to amputate the front portion of both my feet, leaving me with half of a right foot and three-quarters of a left foot. During my six-month hospital stay, doctors found the combination of antidepressant medications that worked best for me, and I learned to walk again.

In the first weeks of my hospitalization, my friend of thirty years, Merita, sat beside my bed singing It Is Well with My Soul. One of the pastors of my faith community and another friend, Ellen, brought my fourteen-year-old daughter to the hospital to see me. The love in my brave daughter’s eyes gave me hope.

After a brief time in a rehabilitation center in California, I moved into the first of several assisted living facilities where I would live for the next five years. I began electroconvulsive treatment twice a week, which I continued for a year. During each session, electrodes were taped to my forehead. I received an anesthesia, and was sedated while my brain was electrically stimulated. Nurses held my hands as they placed the IV and stood beside me smiling when I woke up at the end of each session. I presented a challenge to them, as the usual way to determine responsiveness under a sedative is monitoring the toes. This was not possible in my case, but the nurses adapted and we laughed about it together. Their reassuring presence, lightheartedness, and acceptance of my limitations, as well as the treatments, helped me to begin to see joy in each day.

While I was still hospitalized, Ellen called the help line of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in Montgomery County, MD. She learned of a group of local therapists that provided life coaching and recreation therapy that fit the needs of each person they serve. This group of therapists was unique because their professionals travelled to their clients. They also drove and accompanied their clients to meetings, sessions, or places we need to go as we move forward in our recovery. They were crucial for me because I do not drive, and at the time could not go anywhere independently. Through them, I learned about recreation therapists who help people recover through activities they enjoy. In early 2016, I met Debbie, a recreation therapist with forty years of experience, and I have been working with her ever since.

After months in the hospital, I wanted to be outside as much as possible. Debbie walked with me, and we talked. She asked me what activities I enjoyed when I was younger. When I told Debbie that I had been reading children’s books throughout my life, she encouraged me to become trained through the literacy council to teach adults how to read. I went through the training and was matched with a woman from Egypt who wanted to learn how to read English so that she could read books with her grandchildren. For more than a year, I met with this woman weekly. Together, we read children’s books like Be Brave, Little Penguin by Giles Andreae and The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson that she then read with her grandchildren.

When I told Debbie that I had swum competitively in high school and college, she took me to the local pool. I was not afraid of the water, since I had spent so much time in pools during my younger years, but I was concerned about what people would say when they saw my feet. With Debbie’s encouragement, I soon realized people rarely mentioned my partial feet. They may have stared, but given that my eyesight is poor without my glasses, I did not notice. I was just happy to be in a swimming pool where my feet mattered little.

A year later, when I was finally able to swim regularly on my own, a woman sitting nearby me in the locker room was expressing her frustration that her father, who had had a stroke, refused to exercise despite his doctor’s direction that he could and should. I shared with her that after my accident, when I lost portions of both my feet, my supporters encouraged me to walk by taking one step at a time. Their advice empowered me to work up to a regular exercise routine, walking a couple miles at a time and swimming more often. A few weeks later, I ran into this woman in the locker room again. She told me that she had shared my experience with her father, and that he stood up that same day and had been walking regularly since.

While residing in assisted living facilities, I also learned coping techniques from my fellow residents. I recall one morning waking up feeling sad, as I often did early in my recovery.  I wandered out to the dining room. Gloria, a ninety-year-old woman who lived in the room beside my bedroom, sat alone at the dining room table in her wheelchair. Her kind eyes reminded me of our former housekeeper who was a large part of my childhood growing up in the 1970s in South Carolina. I kissed Gloria gently on the forehead and said, “I love you.” Gloria turned to me with a steady, kind gaze and said clearly, “I love you, too.”

Those would be the only words I would hear Gloria speak in the eighteen months I knew her before she passed away in her sleep one night. Her family told me she had been a high-school counselor in a large city for much of her life. She counseled me that morning with her kindness.

One December afternoon, a local musician came to our facility to play Christmas songs. Maude, a woman in her late sixties with early onset Alzheimer’s, sat in her wheelchair in the living room to hear the music. The musician began to play Joy to the World. I asked the only other ambulatory resident, a man in his late seventies, to dance. As the familiar chords began to sound, Maude’s face sprang to life. I motioned to the man with whom I was dancing to take one of Maude’s hands while I held the other. Although Maude could not speak, the joy on her face radiated throughout our holiday gathering.

When my psychiatrist gave his approval for me to ride the Metro again, Debbie rode with me on my first few trips, and gradually, as I gained confidence, we were able to joke together on the platform. I recall our first Metro ride. After we rode one stop together, I stepped off the train onto the platform, reaching my hand back for Debbie’s. She said, “Let me just switch my bag to the other shoulder, so I don’t trip you.”

“Yeah, that would not be something you would want to put on your resume,” I said. Debbie grinned at me, shifted her bag, and took my hand. Together on the platform, we looked up at the sky and laughed. Paired images of the bright-blue sky and our shared happiness personified hope, which allowed me to fully celebrate this milestone moment, creating a protective image I would carry with me on subsequent trips to the Metro. A few weeks later, I was riding the Metro independently and have been doing so since 2018.

After I had been riding the Metro independently for a few months, I found out that a group from our church would be going to a Washington Nationals game, travelling by Metro. I knew that Olivia, the woman leading that trip, had been riding on the train that I had jumped in front of in 2015. She went to services that morning and encouraged people to pray for the person who had been struck without knowing it was me. Pastors and church members later visited me in the hospital, sent cards, and showed how much they cared throughout my recovery. I wanted to go to the baseball game in 2018, but was unsure how the church group would feel about me riding on the Metro with them. When I asked Olivia if I could go with them she replied, “Definitely. I’ve got your back. Always have, always will.” With those words, and a successful trip to the ballgame, I knew I never had walked alone and never would.

During the pandemic, I’ve stayed connected with my church online through small groups and worship services. Their continued presence in my life has made all the difference in helping me progress forward. Before the pandemic, our church was the most consistent place that I saw my teenage children each week. The church leaders also knew that I had read with children of all ages for more than a decade, and encouraged me to read with children at the church. I took joy in varying my tone and taking on the voices of different characters, basing my animation on the expressions of those listening. Sharing stories together like You’re Here for a Reason by Nancy Tillman and I Believe I Can by Grace Byers, we were all transported beyond the moment into make-believe, a healthy escape for children of all ages.

One Sunday morning, sitting on the floor of our church nursery, three preschoolers sat in front of me, eyes fixed on the pictures as I read the classic story The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. My daughter, then sixteen years old, sat behind me on the floor with one arm draped over my shoulder. With her other hand, my daughter reached to the end of my shoe. As I read the story of the little engine that made it over the mountain because the dolls and toys cheered her on and gave her confidence, my daughter squeezed repeatedly the empty toe of my right tennis shoe. She leaned into me as I read the story.

Just before Thanksgiving of 2018, I met both of my teenage children for lunch with a friend. Afterwards, my daughter, now seventeen, showed me a new bookstore. We talked about how wonderful it was to finally have a neighborhood bookstore. Over the coming months, I became a regular at that store, and the owner invited me to begin reading with children there on a regular basis.

One morning while I was reading We’re All Wonders by R. J. Palacio, a girl sitting in her mother’s lap asked me to read a finger puppet book about a little puppy. Both she and another little girl listening with her mother were about four years old, so I asked if they would like to control the puppet with their fingers while I read. Emma, the little girl who had asked for the book, removed her hands from underneath her mother’s arms and said, “I can’t do that.” All of her fingers ended at the first knuckle and her thumbs were also abbreviated. I encouraged her to act out the part of the puppy while I read. She joined in with enthusiasm, making barking sounds as I read to the two girls.

After I had finished reading, Emma’s mother walked over to bookshelves and picked up a copy of the book I had been reading. I approached her and asked if it would be helpful for her daughter to feel the empty part of the front of my shoes.

Her mother told me Emma also had short feet and had had multiple surgeries to correct this anomaly she had had since birth. She was due to have another surgery the following month. Though I was trying to talk quietly with Emma’s mother, the little girl seemed to know exactly what we were saying. She walked over to us, sat down on the floor, and began taking off her shoes, glancing only briefly at her mother. Her mother nodded approval, and Emma took off her shoes to show her short sock covered feet. Emma asked me to show her my feet. The other little girl, sitting in her mother’s lap, watched what was happening. I looked at both mothers, and when they nodded their approval, I also took off my shoes.

Emma appeared fascinated that my feet were also short, and she took off her socks. I was aware that the other mother and daughter were watching us, but could see the look of understanding on her face. Emma then asked me to take off my socks. I looked at both mothers again to make sure this was okay, and again, they nodded. I took off my socks. Emma said, “Gross, you do not have any toes.”

I looked at Emma and said, “That’s okay. My feet work for me just like your feet work for you.”

Both of us put our socks and shoes back on, and the mother of the other little girl told her daughter, “Everybody is different.”

When Emma went to play in the little tent in the story corner, her mother apologized for what she had said, saying that her daughter was repeating what other children had said to her. I told her that I understood, and that I thought it was natural her daughter had repeated what she had heard from others. I wanted Emma to know that I was all right with my feet just as they were. Before they left, Emma showed me tricks she could do with a little Nerf soccer ball she was playing with by herself, and we began kicking the soft soccer ball back and forth. I wished mother and daughter the best with Emma’s next surgery, and they left the bookstore with a copy of We’re All Wonders.

When I later told my own children about this incident, my son and daughter laughed when they heard Emma’s reaction after seeing my feet. I laughed with them.

The first time my children saw my bare feet was four years after I was hit by the train. We were swimming together at a friend’s neighborhood pool. In the bright sunshine of the day, each of us climbed in the water and began to swim and splash. About twenty minutes later, my eighteen-year-old daughter sank beneath the water in front of me as I stood in the shallow end, talking with my friend and my fifteen-year-old son. After about ten seconds under water, my daughter reappeared and said, “This is the first time I’ve seen your feet.”

I asked her and my son if they had any questions. My son said, “Mom, can you still do the butterfly stroke?”

I had been swimming by myself for some time at that point, and the competitive swimmer in me resurfaced. I had swum the stroke at the pool previously, but decided to have fun with my kids. I said that the butterfly was more difficult because the dolphin kick really requires toes, but that I would give it a try. I swam the length of the pool and back doing a passable butterfly, although probably not competitively legal.

My daughter said, “Mom, I am proud of you.”

My son said, “So am I, Mom. You’re pretty cool.” I could not dream of any better affirmation.

 

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In 2019, NAMI helped me go through training to begin sharing my recovery story.  On the fourth anniversary of the day I jumped in front of the train, I was on my way to meet two other NAMI speakers who would join me to give a presentation at a senior center. I climbed onto the public bus, and as usual had difficulty keeping my balance as I looked for an open seat. I confess I was feeling sorry for myself when I sat down.

Once seated, I watched a woman board the bus. She used the front pole beside the driver to pull herself up the steps, then swiveled her body into the front seat with the grace of a dancer. She thanked the bystander who lifted her wheelchair on to the bus behind her. It was then that I noticed her left pant leg was empty. In that moment, I became grateful for the feet I have.

By the time I arrived at the senior center, I was no longer feeling sorry for myself and was ready to speak. After all three of us had shared our experiences, an older man sitting in the audience raised his hand. He thanked me for sharing my story, saying that his wife who was sitting beside him had jumped in front of a train when she was 16 years old. Given their age, this incident must have taken place at least 60 years ago. After the talk, I went up and spoke to the couple. I asked the woman if I could give her a hug. We wrapped our arms around each other in silence, and exchanged more than words could have expressed.

 

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When I touch my neck, I feel the scar from the tracheotomy doctors did to save my life five years ago. In front of that scar, I wear a chain that holds four emblems symbolizing the relationships that have helped me rebuild my life. The cross I wear represents my church. I also wear a key charm that was given to me when I was a teenager. This charm was placed on me when I was waking from a coma by my friends who ran down the mountain to call Flight for Life when I fell in the Rocky Mountains. The emblem I wear with the words “Love, Live and Laugh” is also worn by Ellen, who supported me after I jumped in front of the train in 2015.

My teenage daughter gave me the largest emblem I wear. The words on the silver oval read “Mom, I Love You to the Moon and Back.” Whenever I am uncertain, I grasp those four emblems firmly in my right fist. Holding these four metal emblems allows me to center myself and focus, secure in these relationships that have taught me to laugh and learn through my challenges.

I have been asked how I deal with my own personal guilt. Of course I regret that major depression caused me to jump in front of a train. Today, however, I have tremendous gratitude for the support I have. My therapist, church, and friends have taught me to learn from my past. Through their words, I realize that guilt is essentially a prison of my own design. Those who support me want me to build bridges to a better tomorrow. Realizing I cannot change what has already occurred, I ask myself what I can learn from all my experiences, both positive and negative.

I know I live with depression. Despite this illness, I have also been given gifts. My depression has been in full remission since 2018. I am grateful that I’m alive and am able to walk. I am so fortunate that I have people who care deeply for me and help me stay focused on moving forward. I know what I need to do to keep my depression in remission and stay healthy. I must take my medication and check in regularly with my psychiatrist and therapist. I must eat healthy food and exercise a moderate amount. I need to sleep at least ten hours every day, and I must take care of myself as I rejoice in celebrating the joyous life I have.

I was working my way to living independently, but when the pandemic began I had to remain in the assisted living facility where I lived in three small rooms. Twice a day, caregivers knocked on my door to swipe my forehead to check my temperature. Once a week, wearing a double mask, I went downstairs to pick up groceries that my church friends brought me. The only other human contact I had was through phone calls and on my computer.

I knew for my own mental health I needed to put into practice the strategies I talked about in my NAMI presentations. Although I had used a gratitude journal in the past, I never had made keeping it a daily practice. During the pandemic, however, I began writing a daily gratitude log, listing every phone call with my children and each computer or phone connection I had with my friends.

In this gratitude log, I also wrote about the challenges I faced and what I did to overcome my difficulties. I included humor in my journal. I wrote that while I grieve never being able to wear flip-flops again I am grateful I have a valid reason to never again put on a pair of high heels.

After a couple of months, the pandemic restrictions eased enough so that I was able to leave my suite of rooms and go for daily walks. I included in my daily gratitude log hearing nestlings chirp and seeing birds soar. Initially, I kept this gratitude log to prove I could live independently, but this journal has become a daily part of my life. I continue to keep the log four months after moving into my own independent apartment and plan to continue this daily practice. On February 1, 2021, I marked day 300 in my log and included my gratitude for this journal that has taught me I can make my own happiness.

A friend once encouraged me to walk on my ‘own two feet.’ I asked that friend, a former math tutor who helped me find shoes to fit my feet, “How much is one half and three quarters?” My wise friend, who understood what I was implying, said, “One and one quarter, but you need to find your own answer.”

Six years after loneliness almost drowned me, I have learned so much from each relationship that has led to my recovery. For me, one half plus three quarters will always equal infinity, pandemic or not.

In this essay, “Gloria,” “Maude,” “Olivia,” and “Emma” are pseudonyms.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, or you know someone who is, help is available. In the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. You can also text with an emotional support counselor with the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. A complete list of resources can be found at https://www.speakingofsuicide.com/resources/

Shannon Heath Parkin is a mother and has been a member of Silver Spring United Methodist church since 2008. She volunteers as an In Your Own Voice speaker and a Connection Recovery Facilitator for NAMI-Montgomery County, MD. In October of 2020, Shannon was part of the Lived Experience panel at the Maryland Suicide Prevention Conference. Portions of her recovery story were shared at the NAMI Maryland conference in 2020, and in USA Today in April of 2020. She is a public speaker and writer focusing on mental health recovery and advocating for the prevention of suicide. You can find her on Twitter: @ShannonParkin2 and at shanheathparkin803@icloud.com.